ABSTRACT
Music teacher education has not evolved in conjunction with musicianship from popular culture. Around the world today, music is created, recreated, shared/distributed, and performed through mediums that did not exist in the past. Yet music teacher education is typically built around exclusive traditions centering band, choir, and orchestra, with a smattering of inclusive musics relegated to general music and multicultural music. Emerging music educators need to be prepared to teach a more diverse culture with ever evolving musics and musicianship – in particular those represented in the chapters of this book. While there are certainly undeniable benefits to preserving practices, honoring traditions, and curating habits, we as a profession are charged to be inclusive and serve all student cultures more effectively than we currently do. Therefore, we must emerge from the past and embrace new horizons. This chapter problematizes and advocates for music education. It examines the previous chapters in this book and considers them alongside each other with a special focus towards new possibilities for musics. This chapter provides implications and suggestions that serve to situate the emergent areas of music and music education espoused in ways that may bring generations of the music education profession forward. This is all part of an effort in our profession to push forward and move beyond reverential curatorial habits of antiquated musicianships, and turn towards progress, innovation, and emergent musicianships. By facing forward and addressing the possibilities and potential for new pedagogies and musics to be part of the music education landscape, this chapter seeks to enable a more sustainable and successful music education for the future.
